List
by Sorde
Summary: Women like to think of men as a piece of clothing they can beat through the dryer until it's six sizes too tight and makes them look less fat." Lexie makes Mark write a list.


**Title:** List  
**Summary: **___"_Women like to think of men as a piece of clothing they can beat through the dryer until it's six sizes too tight and makes them look less fat." Lexie makes Mark write a list.  
**Couples: **Mark/Lexie  
**Author's Note: **I know. I suck. I haven't updated my last story in _way _too long, but, in short, my keyboard broke, and this inspiration hit, and, well... here we are. This is a story that came to mind in Holidaze, but there are no spoilers for that episode.

**[ LIST ]**

"Mark?" There was something in her voice, some hint of hesitation mixed with Lexie's incessant burning curiosity, that made Mark turn slightly. The newspaper in his hand ruffled with a crackling noise as he turned, one eyebrow raised in anticipation. Her expression made him surprisingly nervous as she opened and closed her mouth, trying to find the words to say whatever the hell she felt she needed to.

"Grey," he said quietly, throwing one arm over the couch as he eyed her, sitting on a barstool in the kitchen. "Spit it out."

"I was just... uh, I just wanted to, uh, know if you'd..." She cleared her throat carefully, averting her gaze from his anticipating blue eyes. With a not-so-subtle roll of his eyes, he leaned forward to grab his beer off the table in front of him, sipping at it. She took a deep breath, locked eyes with his amused ones, and said, her voice surprisingly clear and stutter-free, "Can you write me a list of every woman you've slept with?"

He choked. As Mark Sloan, the greatest plastic surgeon in the world, he shouldn't have choked. He should have been suave, should have chuckled and laughed charmingly, shaking his head or something that didn't involve spitting beer -_ manly_ beer - all over his couch, table, and partially on his beloved flatscreen. Lexie, always supportive, knew well enough not to run over and comfort him - it would ruin his manliness - and rearranged her expression carefully from disgust to - she couldn't help it - mild amusement.

"_Why?_" he finally managed to gasp out, his eyes wide in surprise as he wiped at the table haphazardly with the also-covered newspaper.

"I, um, I ran into Olivia the other day..." She averted her gaze again. "You know, the, uh, the nurse the Chief had to fire..."

"Nurse Olivia?" Almost unconsciously, a smile crept across his mouth as he stopped his actions, returning his eyes to Lexie again. "You don't say?" Catching her eye, however, he immediately looked away, hiding from her glare with an almost childish glee.

"She- she had a completely one-sided conversation with me about how good you were in bed."

Oops.

"And this led to the list?" He cautiously threw her a glance again, and looked away immediately, carefully folding the newspaper in his hands.

"Yes."

"May I ask why?"

"Because... Because I'd _really_ like to know when I'm talking to someone who's been in your pants." Fair enough, he almost said, but Mark Sloan would not be Mark Sloan if he obliged every command a woman offered... unless, of course, it was a command offered to him in bed. He gave it a moment's thought and realized, with a sort of sickening clarity: he could either be whipped, and have Lexie be aware of every one of his faults, or be an asshole, and lose her. It was a close call.

"Or what?" Feigning nonchalance, Mark stopped his beer-cleaning and leaned back against the couch, eying her defiantly.

"Excuse me?" Completely taken aback, it appeared, Lexie clasped her hands uncertainly, leaving them to hover awkwardly over her lap. "I-I..."

"You're a woman, Grey. A particularly unique woman, a little less hormonal and angst-ridden then most, but a woman, let me assure you, nonetheless. And women like to threaten." His eyes developed a strangely wispy appearance. "They like to think of men as a piece of clothing that they can beat through the dryer until it's six sizes too tight and makes them look less fat." With a casual shake of his head, he returned to the real world. "And so I ask: or what?"

Lexie loved a challenge. She may have been less hormonal and angst-ridden then most women, but she did love a challenge, and Mark was offering her one as though it lay dangling above his too-tall head. So she grabbed her figurative ladder and reached the challenge, taller then Mark. "Or else we're done."

Apparently, being whipped would have been a better option.

* * *

"She asked for _what_?" Derek twirled his office chair around in glee. "Oh, the girl's good." He eyed Mark in amusement, watching as his best friend buried his face in his hands with a groan. After a moment or two, Mark looked up again with a sharp glare in Derek's direction.

"You put her up to this, didn't you?" he said in his slightly-southern twang. For a moment, exaltation crossed his features, until he caught sight of Derek gently shaking his head, his shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter in the same rhythm.

"Oh, no. I wish I'd thought of it first."

"Should I..." Mark opened his mouth again in hesitation, glaring at the picture of an orange opposite Derek's head. "Should I do it?" Insecurity may have been Mark Sloan's strong suit, but he, on principle, preferred not to show it. And he preferred not to ask for opinions.

"Why are you asking me?" Derek said sharply, his eyes still wide with amusement.

"You've done this whole... relationship crap before. You know what women want." He snorted. "Well, _I_ know what women really want, but you know what they want outside of the, erm... _boudoir._"

"Yeah, but _I_ haven't slept with as many women as you." With a contemplative shrug, Derek added, "What is it, now? Fifty? Sixty?"

Mark stood in what would appear to be absurdly-placed indignation as he reached for the door. "You underestimate me. I'm pushing the hundreds."

And he opened the office door into the hospital.

* * *

"You asked Mark Sloan to to write you a list of every woman he's ever slept with." Meredith snorted loudly, leaning back against her counter. Cristina and Izzie both sat at the table across from Mer, laughing as politely as possible, under the circumstances.

"So, you'll get half the female doctors, most of the nursing staff... not to mention Addison Montgomery," Izzie said, leaning back against her chair and putting her hands behind her head. "And that's only in the last year." The three of them fell in a heap of giggles as Lexie stood in the background, awkwardly trying to suppress tears and embarrassment.

"Way to be, Three," Cristina offered consolingly. "It's like you're trying to lose the number-one person to kickstart your career."

"Leave her alone," Mer said sharply. "I'd be curious, too."

"Yeah, but you probably wouldn't be stupid enough to act on it." Cristina rolled her eyes and stood up. "If it makes you feel better, Little Grey, it should only be fifteen or twenty-five pages, front and back." Izzie snorted loudly, and even Meredith couldn't hold back a little giggle.

"Oh my God, Mark Sloan has to write a list of every woman he's ever slept with." Izzie stared at Lexie pleadingly. "Can you show it to us? _Please_?"

"Yeah, we can submit it to Guiness and have it written up as a world record." Cristina laughed again.

Lexie sighed softly in the background, munching on a carrot like a rabbit as she sweated nervously.

* * *

"I'll do it if you do." Mark shook off his coat as he walked into the apartment, dropping it off neatly on a hanger in the closet before walking up to greet Lexie with a small kiss. "You write your list, then I will, too."

"That- that completely defeats the purpose!"

"I'm not saying you have to," he shrugged. "But if you're going to make me, then I need one, too." After a moment's glare, she nodded in consent, walking over to the couch and plopping herself down on it dramatically. He walked over and, as gently as Mark was capable, rested one hand on her hair, running one thumb smoothly across it.

"Fine," she murmured. His head snapped up in surprise.

"Excuse me?"

"Scott Trenton, grade twelve. Antonio Something-or-Other, and Frank Gerard, my freshman year at Harvard-" He cringed in disgust at that, a nearly blasphemous word for a Columbia man. "-Wesley Peterson on and off for pretty much the rest of college, a-and..." She hesitated, breathing in deeply. "Alex Karev, my intern year. And you. And Carter Lee, but I-I don't really count him."

There was silence for a while, until finally, "You don't count a guy?"

"Well, he wasn't very good, and we didn't actually make it very-"

"Okay, I get it." With a great harrumph, Mark sat himself a little straighter on the couch. "So. Six people. Kind of seven." She nodded.

"Your turn."

"Believe me," he said with a snort, "I can't do mine off the top of my head like that."

Another pause appeared as Lexie considered that. She'd always known he was a manwhore at one point, but to have it confronting her like that... for a moment, a mere moment, she considered revoking her proposition, considered going back to the way things were, but each woman was like a ghost haunting her, an unconfronted past that lay ugly and waiting for her to unravel. She needed peace.

"So... so write them down."

* * *

Mark Sloan was whipped. There was really no other reason to explain his presence in his own office, as he wrote down a list of as many women as he could remember. He'd considered, really considered, kicking Lexie out of his apartment and moving on, like he'd done with every other woman on his list, but the prospect of losing her was too great, and he decided not to screw it up. Even though the list would surely do that on its own.

Eighty-eight names so far, and he was just finishing his college years. The thought of her sleeping with other men made him oddly jealous, and there were only six of them. He was dead. She would kill him, his past would kill him, something would kill him.

She definitely thought of him as a piece of clothing. Not that he really cared. It was just fact, like it was fact that the saying, "I'm no brain surgeon," should really be, "I'm no plastic surgeon," because frankly, he was smarter then Derek. That, too, was fact. And it was fact that he wanted kids. With Lexie. He wanted kids with Lexie.

Lexie, who would read this list and quite possibly ruin that want. But he had the image in his head, of a little girl and a little boy - there would have to be two, because one would just get lonely - with blond and brown hair, blue and brown eyes, but a mixture. Maybe the little boy would have brown hair and blue eyes, and the little girl would be blond with brown eyes... and they'd date (at twenty-one, because Mark wouldn't be able to handle it any earlier) Owen and Cristina's kids, or one would date theirs and one would date Callie and Arizona's adopted kid, or Izzie and Alex's kid... and they'd get married (thirty-six seemed astoundingly reasonable to him) and it would just be... good.

God, he was so whipped.

* * *

"Here it is," he said, his voice gruff as he ducked his head slightly, in either shame or embarrassment, it was hard to tell. "It's, uh- Well, it's here." Roughly, he shoved it into her awaiting hands.

"Thanks." One sheet of paper. There was no way in hell Mark Sloan had squeezed one hundred-plus names onto one sheet of paper. She eyed the front of it uncertainly.

"It's... well, it's all there. Most of 'em, anyway. I probably forgot a few, but, uh... well. There it is." He cleared his throat. "I squeezed them all onto one side so you could just look at the other one."

It suddenly seemed ridiculously trivial. She held the paper uncertainly in her hand and, without any hesitation, flipped it over to the accused side and ignored the side she'd been so desperate to get. Her name was the only one there.

"That's... that's the new list. The list of the man you've created." He scratched behind one ear absently. "And I'm begging you, please make sure it stays that way, Little Grey, because that list is now in your power. Whenever someone's added, it's on your shoulders." He shrugged. "'cause I'm not going anywhere willingly."

"Okay." It was barely above a whisper. That was okay.

"Okay," he repeated.

"B-by the way, you're wrong."

"What?"

"Your euphemism. It's wrong. Women like to think of men as a piece of clothing they can beat through the dryer until it's six sizes too tight, but those clothes like to pretend that they're not getting brainwashed the entire cycle." She chuckled softly, leaning into his chest. "That was way too well played."

He grinned proudly. "Did I overdo it?"

"Nope." She leaned up to kiss him.

On the other side of the door, Izzie, Meredith, Cristina and Derek sighed.

"Damn it," Izzie offered. "I really wanted to submit that list to Guinness."


End file.
